AI & Brand & Comms Strategy Leader | AI-Driven Storytelling, Behavioural Insight & Human Impact | The Curious Brain

December 9, 2025

What animals and nature can teach us about power, competence and the failures of modern societies

There is a quietly unsettling observation circulating in philosophical circles: animals, for all their supposed simplicity, do not let fools lead the pack.

Yet humans routinely do. This is not a sentimental comparison between nature and civilisation; it is a structural critique of how modern societies select those who command them.

In the natural world, leadership is costly. A wolf that cannot hunt, a lion that hesitates, a primate that misreads threat signals, does not retain status for long. The group corrects failure immediately. Competence is not aspirational. It is the prerequisite for survival.

Humans have inverted that logic.

Across cultures and political systems, many societies elevate figures who would not survive a day as leaders in the animal kingdom. Individuals rewarded not for judgement or restraint but for volume, confidence, and untested certainty. Spectacle becomes a substitute for substance.

This is not a moral failing; it is an economic and informational one. Modern leadership is often conferred through mechanisms that reward visibility over competence. Electoral contests, media ecosystems and corporate hierarchies are vulnerable to a simple bias: the ease of recognising noise over discerning wisdom.

In democracies, attention has become a form of capital. In corporations, charisma outperforms capability. In public life, performance frequently outranks understanding.

Animals select leaders based on demonstrated fitness. Humans select leaders based on perceived fitness, a perception shaped by narratives, algorithms, and increasingly polarised identities.

A phenomenon well-documented in organisational psychology compounds the problem: capable individuals tend to speak less frequently and more cautiously in public forums, while the least informed express themselves with the greatest confidence. This asymmetry creates fertile ground for what sociologists call “the prominence of the unqualified.”

When intelligence becomes quiet, stupidity does not remain idle. It fills the vacuum, often with remarkable force.

The political implications are visible across continents. Populist movements frequently rally around figures who embody frustration rather than competence. Corporate boards occasionally elevate leaders whose primary skill is self-promotion rather than stewardship. Even cultural debates reward rhetoricians who can generate reaction rather than resolution.

This is not because people admire incompetence. It is because the systems mediating leadership, digital platforms, party primaries, media amplification structures, reward traits animals would interpret as signals of danger.

To understand the divergence between humans and animals, one must examine the criteria for trust.

Animals rely on instinct because instinct, in evolutionary terms, is the accumulated memory of survival. A wolf does not need rhetoric to assess a leader; it observes outcomes. Strength, coordination, foresight and risk-reading determine status.

Humans, however, are shaped by appearances. The modern environment is too complex for instinct alone, yet too mediated for direct evaluation. As a result, citizens and employees judge leaders through proxies: confidence, fluency, symbolism, partisanship, tribal identity.

These proxies can be gamed.

A leader who presents certainty can outperform a leader who possesses competence. A leader who entertains can overshadow one who governs.

A leader who simplifies can defeat one who understands.

Animals correct misalignment instantly. Humans often do so only after crisis.

The consequences of faulty leadership selection manifest in predictable ways: institutional volatility, declining trust in governance, corporate fragility, and social fragmentation. When societies repeatedly hand authority to the least prepared, the costs compound across generations.

The comparison with animals is not an argument for instinct over intellect. It is a reminder that leadership, at its core, is a survival function. When the wrong individuals rule, the group suffers.

Animals recognise this intrinsically. Humans often learn it only in hindsight.

If societies wish to reverse the pattern, the solution is not to mimic the animal kingdom but to realign incentives. Systems must reward:

• proven judgement over theatrical certainty • outcomes over rhetoric • long-term stability over short-term spectacle • accountability over charisma

The problem is not that humans lack the ability to choose good leaders. The problem is that the mechanisms we have built for identifying them reward the opposite qualities.

Leadership is not entertainment. It is stewardship.

Until modern societies re-learn that distinction, animals may continue to show more wisdom than the people who claim dominion over them